[HN Gopher] The M1 MacBook Air is the best computer I've ever owned
___________________________________________________________________
The M1 MacBook Air is the best computer I've ever owned
Author : bouk
Score : 192 points
Date : 2021-01-10 18:24 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (bou.ke)
(TXT) w3m dump (bou.ke)
| croes wrote:
| More RAM would be nice.
| breck wrote:
| Would always be nice, for sure, but for Deep Learning I use a
| big cheap box with loads of RAM and the 16GB in my M1 MBP with
| the 1TB SSD seems plenty good so far. I don't have use cases
| yet where I notice a problem (other than yeah, overhead of
| having to do DL jobs on a different machine).
|
| What causes you to hit the limits? I don't do any video
| editing, so I could see that being a slowdown for that use
| case.
| _huayra_ wrote:
| Being able to locally run the integration tests for my work
| on my 32GB thinkpad has been a godsend during the 'rona
| times. If I only had 16 (or even 24) I'd have to carefully
| consider whether I should close Firefox to run them.
|
| These tests spin up a bunch of containers and run certain
| components with instrumented runtimes that take up gobs of
| RAM, so having a fat laptop is very useful.
| bouk wrote:
| Maybe, but the RAM and disk performance is so good [1] that it
| might not be needed so badly. Unless you want to run a whole
| bunch of VMs
|
| https://mobile.twitter.com/Sirupsen/status/13442670199449477...
| Apocryphon wrote:
| I'd like to see how much gaming Apple Silicon can support. So
| I'm very curious to see what next year's M1X/M2 machines will
| bring. Of course, we're also at the dawn of widespread cloud
| gaming so perhaps this consideration will also be moot.
| alphadevx wrote:
| In my experience, the latest computer I buy is always "the best
| computer I've ever owned". They get better every year, why is
| this still surprising?
| mumblemumble wrote:
| > They get better every year
|
| For us Apple users, this stopped being true about 4 years back.
| The_Colonel wrote:
| I specifically remember the year laptops went from 16:10
| displays to 16:9 because ... reasons. Laptops did not get
| better that year.
|
| Now moving from 16:9 to 16:10 (or 3:2) is called an innovation
| ...
| Fricken wrote:
| Your experience apparently doesn't include the first paragraph
| of the article.
| mojuba wrote:
| Not always. I'm somewhat disappointed with my 2020 16" MBP that
| I bought after owning a 2015 MBP for 5 years. This one is
| faster for sure, but also noisier, gets hot often for no good
| reason (even with the lid closed for the whole day!), takes 7-8
| seconds to wake my Eizo monitor, while the previous one would
| take only a second to do the same.
|
| To be honest and quite unexpectedly the 16" MBP is not the best
| Mac I ever owned, despite the hype. The display is amazing, the
| speakers are incredible for a laptop, I'm also glad the T arrow
| keys are back, but everything else is a disappointment.
| _ph_ wrote:
| Strange, I did exactly the same switch recently and consider
| the 16" MBP a significant upgrade from my old machine. It
| even stays completely silent most of the day while the old
| one would constantly spin the fans.
| mojuba wrote:
| It is a an upgrade in some ways, no doubt. When Apple said
| the 16" MBP has the best ever laptop display they were
| right - it's hard to go back to the previous models after
| this one.
|
| Something just _feels_ a bit wrong about this machine.
| Running trivial Swift code in Playground can get it so hot
| that it becomes uncomfortable to rest it on the lap for
| example.
|
| Do I need a processor _that_ powerful? I 'm not so sure if
| the price is the unsettling fan noise and being practically
| constantly warm. And no, there's no 3rd party software that
| could cause it, it's all Apple apps.
| procinct wrote:
| Generally this is surprising because the user bought the "Air"
| model instead of his usual "pro" model which is much more
| expensive. The impressive part here is that the air outperforms
| last years pro (according to the author) which is 3x the price.
| DennisAleynikov wrote:
| this is what people meant prior to the m1 coming out with
| "macs are a horrible deal"
|
| they used to be priced at roughly 3x markup compared to the
| market. they finally fixed their co-dependency with intel and
| suddenly wow the price gouging goes out the door because
| _gasp_ the macbook air could have always been the pro it was
| just never possible with using old chips.
|
| ANYTHING using arm absolutely FLIES
|
| open your eyes people
| spurdoman77 wrote:
| I have tried arm computers such as raspberry pi and they
| are slow. The linux arm projects seem to target just the
| cheapest price, m1 seems more like bang for buck. I hope
| linux hardware develops towards that.
| DennisAleynikov wrote:
| raspberry pi's werent even 64bit until the latest
| revision and are meant to be dirt cheap <$25 computers
|
| the arm chromebooks like the lenovo duet absolutely
| murder the iPad pro or even the new iPad Air in terms of
| actually being a useful OS for devs
| Someone wrote:
| I don't know whether that's true, but that's quite a
| change of subject from "macs are priced at roughly 3x
| markup compared to the market".
| DennisAleynikov wrote:
| the duet, the laptop I actually use is $300 which apple
| does not have a competing product with, its fair to claim
| in my head that even now its 3x more than what I am
| paying.
|
| as an ex macbook pro main, I bought 3 of them over the
| course of last decade and a half and they have always had
| older intel brains than any xps or razer stealth I would
| try to cross shop with. after m1 apples price to
| performance ratio is at unreal levels
| lostlogin wrote:
| Mac MacBooks have generally lasted 10ish years. Sometimes
| more sometimes less. That's awfully close in price to 3x
| $300 laptops in 10 years.
| messe wrote:
| > they used to be priced at roughly 3x markup compared to
| the market
|
| Were they though? With comparable displays and build
| quality, I think their laptops have been competitive with
| the upper end of the market for a while now, with _maybe_ a
| 10-20% markup on that.
| DennisAleynikov wrote:
| fair, if you wanted good build good luck finding one
| outside of apple
|
| I was more mad at the general markup relative to similar
| intel chips in say a Dell or HP ultralight
| jeffbee wrote:
| Those ARM Chromebooks are/were the slowest computers on the
| market. There is nothing with an ARM CPU that "flies"
| except the new Macs. Using the same benchmark (Geekbench 5)
| the M1 has a single-core score of ~1700 and contemporaneous
| ARM competitors like the Lenovo Yoga 5C and the Surface Pro
| X get 700-750. The other ARM CPUs have equivalent
| performance to bottom-of-the-line mobile Intel processors
| from 2012. Apple M1 has the equivalent of Intel processors
| from some point in the future.
| DennisAleynikov wrote:
| false.
|
| I daily drive a lenovo duet and its absolutely the
| closest thing to perfection in the modern computing
| realm. Its a surface go but running arm and chromeos and
| it flies thru all of my webapps like Framer, Figma,
| Plectica, Notion, Photopea, Visual Studio Code, Blender
| etc
|
| m1 is scary fast, but also x64 is dead and needs to be
| transitioned to the new age. Apple or not this is a major
| shift in the dev market
|
| and not only in $800+ price
|
| the duet is $300
| jeffbee wrote:
| It's clear that you don't have enough experience with
| computers other than that one to support the statements
| you are making. I'm glad it is adequate for your purposes
| but to say that "it flies" is absurd. The Chromebook Duet
| scores 27 in the javascript benchmark Speedometer 2,
| while the MacBook Air scores 234. It is _nine times_
| faster. Looking at the single-thread geekbench 5 score,
| the Duet gets a score of 263, about half the performance
| of the dual-core Pentium CPU from 2008, a part which
| AnandTech once reviewed as part of a joke article. There
| 's a supportable argument that the Chromebook Duet is the
| slowest laptop on the market today, without exception.
| denimnerd42 wrote:
| yeah and then those are poor devs like me whose work
| notebook is a U series intel on an enterprise HP/DELL body
| which probably cost $800.
| DennisAleynikov wrote:
| some older intel chips are good and faithful (apple wasnt
| the ones passing the savings on to you like HP) they
| prefered to both give you outdated intel chips but also
| ask you $3500 for the honor
| kgwgk wrote:
| The latest computer is usually not "the best you've ever owned"
| when you "downgrade" from last-year top-shelf to entry-level.
| derimagia wrote:
| This isn't going to be as common. Either way it's not
| surprising.
| zepto wrote:
| Why is it not surprising when it has never been true before
| now?
| DennisAleynikov wrote:
| people don't remember good
|
| also people have been absolutely IGNORING the massive speed
| gains and battery life of say an ARM chromebook or surface pro
| X
|
| apparently only apple does good when they modify the ISA for
| x64 memory instructions to not have to be emulated so they can
| pretend rosetta is miles ahead of other virtualization when its
| hw based...
| matthewmacleod wrote:
| _apparently only apple does good when they modify the ISA for
| x64 memory instructions to not have to be emulated so they
| can pretend rosetta is miles ahead of other virtualization
| when its hw based...
|
| Those sneaky bastards - making their products perform better
| by introducing _new features*! Whatever next?
| DennisAleynikov wrote:
| "new features" ah yes I love hw tweaks for benchmark
| juicers mmmmmmmm shows me so much about what matters in the
| real world
| oarsinsync wrote:
| > shows me so much about what matters in the real world
|
| Assuming you're a developer, how about compile time +
| battery life remaining? From nearly 2 months ago, this
| isn't news anymore:
| https://twitter.com/panzer/status/1328700636926332928
|
| EDIT: Or assuming you like to watch media on a range of
| devices at home, and share your media with your family
| and friends, maybe the ability to transcode h264 or h265
| content also matters to you:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wK3xVXAd6_o
|
| TL;DW: Plex Transcoder running through Rosetta2 doesn't
| even break a sweat.
| [deleted]
| tomjen3 wrote:
| A chromebook is a toy and a surface pro X is a terrible
| computer. Apple wasn't the first to transition to ARM, but
| they were the first to do it right. If they added things to
| the hardware to enable this, so what?
| DennisAleynikov wrote:
| they ended up shipping the m1 macs running essentially
| SafariOS so... I guess they wanted to join the ranks of
| "toys" people can actually use to have all their modern
| apps run well on (webapps)
|
| idk if you've noticed the transitions going basically as
| well as it went for other brands minus being able to...
| point to higher geekbench scores when emulating x64???
|
| never did I think I'd see the day when apple is trying its
| best to rush literally chromeos but based on bsd out the
| door at the last second because catalyst barely runs any
| apps in a useful way
| thatswrong0 wrote:
| > they ended up shipping the m1 macs running essentially
| SafariOS
|
| What on earth are you talking about
| DennisAleynikov wrote:
| idk if you are at all familiar with arm computers but
| they have been out for a while, mainly running things
| like ChromeOS or for microsoft EdgeOS or "Windows 10 S"
|
| the strategy revolves around using web performance on arm
| to overshadown the general lack of optimized arm apps. as
| apples release of the M1 has shown, no apps are really
| optimized yet even 1 month after launch for an APPLE
| product...
|
| thats where the SafariOS explanations makes more sense,
| they essentially just have safari, and a similar but
| equally broken app store ported from the iPad but with
| most devs chosing to opt out of supporting safariOS...
| weird how they mocked google and then pulled a google
| danaris wrote:
| No, the version of macOS on M1 Macs is the exact same
| version as on Intel Macs. They don't run _absolutely
| every_ piece of software that Intel Macs do, but it 's
| pretty damn close. It's certainly not even in the same
| category as something like ChromeOS and ARM Windows.
|
| It sounds like you may be pre-judging the M1 Macs based
| on your past experiences with ARM desktops/laptops. I
| strongly suggest that you put those experiences aside
| when looking at these, because Apple has gone to a great
| deal of effort to ensure that the experience is as close
| to the previous iteration as possible, with the benefit
| of the extra performance and battery life the M1 gives.
| It's really nothing whatsoever like the comparison
| between Intel and ARM Windows, or Windows and ChromeOS.
| thatswrong0 wrote:
| Except the M1 Macs with Big Sur ship with Rosetta2, which
| mitigates a _lot_ of the issues associated with the
| architectural transition. Most consumers will not notice
| a difference.
|
| You can't just ignore that and then make the disingenuous
| claim that it's anything like the Windows ARM situation,
| especially given the fact that Apple is throwing their
| entire weight behind the transition which will
| (eventually) result in most major applications being
| natively compatible. I'd be curious if anyone thinks that
| this transition is going to fail somehow
| Traster wrote:
| I don't know what your experience buying computers has been,
| but my 2012 MBA was the best I'd ever owned. The 2015 MBP was
| worse, the 2018 MBP I owned was worse than that. The Thinkpad
| X1 carbon I bought after that was the best I've ever owned, and
| every time I see my wife struggling with her Macbook I'm glad I
| finally ditched that rubbish.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| Why was the 2015 MBA worse than the 2012 for you? They're
| basically the same design, and of course the 2015 would be
| more powerful in absolute terms.
|
| (My primary laptop is a 2014 MBA, and I previously owned ones
| from 2012 and 2015.)
| Traster wrote:
| Sorry I wrote MBA, I meant MBP - it had the terrible
| keyboard, I also went for a low end CPU and it really felt
| worse than my 2011 where I max'd out the CPU.
| ValentineC wrote:
| > _The 2015 MBA was worse, the 2018 MBP I owned was worse
| than that._
|
| Was it just the butterfly keys, or some other things too?
| ianai wrote:
| Uh the dell xps 13 I bought in 2016 definitely refutes this
| experience. That machines touchpad singularly ruined the
| experience. It'd ghost swipe in strange ways. It was very user
| hostile. Also there's the long stagnation of performance during
| the previous decade.
|
| But generally I agree with you. I just think it's important to
| remember it's not all been a monotonic function of good.
| ValentineC wrote:
| > _They get better every year, why is this still surprising?_
|
| If my pre-butterfly keys MacBook stopped working some time
| between 2015 and 2019, and I had to get a replacement, I
| wouldn't consider the MacBooks produced during that era to be
| "better".
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| That was true 10 or 20 years ago for sure. These years it's
| more of a meh, "hey look the keyboard works well again."
| cenal wrote:
| I went from a 2017 MBP 15" to a 16" 2019 MBP late last year
| and the keyboard is clearly a big selling point but lets not
| forget how much better the audio is either. It's under played
| in most reviews but it's a night and day difference. I feel
| like I'm in a home theater every time I use it.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| Ya, but before improvements were much more noticeable, and
| now they are much more incremental. They might be nice to
| have if you even notice them, but they don't really change
| the experience that much. And that isn't really surprising,
| when a technology is immature it will grow quickly, and
| when it matures, it will grow much more slowly.
| mbesto wrote:
| You must be new to Macs. I'm still on the MBP 2015 and it's
| "the best computer I've ever owned". Everything since then has
| technically upgraded parts, but the regressions (touchbar,
| butterfly keyboard mishaps, etc.) are not worth the upgrade.
|
| That's why this is surprising.
| VectorLock wrote:
| My 2015 MBP is better than my 2018 MBP by a country mile.
| acjohnson55 wrote:
| My 2010 MBP 15" is still my favorite.
| burlesonK wrote:
| Yep, I have the 13". Oh how I miss Snow Leopard...
| disposekinetics wrote:
| 2011 MBP for me. Everything since has felt like a
| downgrade.
| criveros wrote:
| You adapt to those changes with time.
| ja27 wrote:
| My 15" 2015 MBP was the best bang-for-the-buck Mac I've
| owned. Got it used (to avoid getting a butterfly keyboard
| MBP), almost max CPU, max RAM, swapped in an NVMe SSD and a
| semi-permanent microSD card.
|
| I love my 16" MBP but wasn't blown away by the upgrade.
| Touchbar is meh and mostly in my way. Speakers are a big win.
| Keyboard is a tossup but at least I avoided the butterfly
| era. Everything else is just noticeably better but not a
| "wow" better. My biggest annoyance is fan noise when attached
| to a monitor. Running at native panel resolution seems to
| help.
|
| I'm looking forward to the 16" class M1.
| _ph_ wrote:
| I just switched from a 2015 MBP to the current 16" MBP and it
| is an amazing computer and a significant upgrade towards the
| 2015 one. The keyboard is nice, the screen much better, great
| sound and speed. I also like the touchbar. So the 16" is an
| easy buy. Though of course, you now might want to wait for an
| ARM based one.
| [deleted]
| dayvid wrote:
| I LOVE my 13" 2015 MBP and only stopped using it because of
| keyboard errors. With that said, I believe the new Macbook
| Air and Macbook Pro have the Magic Keyboard which I think is
| essentially the same as the 2015 Macbook Pro keyboard and
| more up-to-date (though maybe not upgradeable).
|
| I recently bought a Zephyrus G14 which I think is one of the
| closer equivalents to a 13" MBP for Windows with a powerful
| GPU.
| Klonoar wrote:
| I bought an M1 as my 2015's keyboard had died over the past
| year, and I got tired of being chained to my desk with my
| Bluetooth keyboard.
|
| The M1 is close but the keys aren't as deep. It's good, but
| the 2015 still felt better to type on.
| c03 wrote:
| So the title should be "Apple actually improved their product
| with their latest computer, and I am surprised" ?
| colmvp wrote:
| The recent MacBook Pro's are IMO not superior to the experience
| of using the first Retina MBP's. I'd rather have that model of
| MBP's, only with performance increases and without the Touch
| Bar.
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| This is the predictable HN response I envisioned after reading
| the title.
|
| You'd start to have a point if they were only talking about raw
| performance. But they aren't.
|
| Also, raw performance alone doesn't make things better. My
| Windows PC almost has the best parts on the market yet things
| don't always feel faster. The UI even feels slower than my
| previous one. It's my latest PC, but it's not the best computer
| I've owned.
| alphadevx wrote:
| I would "start to have a point", really? I will try harder
| next time.
| Huntsecker wrote:
| surely this is the case for any new computer anyone buys
| technically speaking. If you go out now and buy a new computer it
| replaces one less good and at that point in time is the best
| computer you have ever owned...
| Traster wrote:
| This has not been true in the past - Apple hit a peak in the
| early 2010s. It then had ups and downs - Retina was a good
| step, but the CPU bumps have been lame, the Touchbar has been
| an active step backwards, the port situation has got
| progressively worse and the keyboard have been terrible. Some
| models like the Air just got _no_ progression for years on end.
|
| Life in the Apple eco-system isn't like life in the normal
| computer eco-system, there's very little competition once
| you're committed to the OS.
| nevi-me wrote:
| My wife has a 2012 MBP, which is usable because I upgraded the
| RAM to 16GB and added an SSD.
|
| I had limited experience and use of macOS, but didn't like it
| much.
|
| I bought the Air last month under duress, because I was going to
| a place that's 10degC warmer than my home, and my laptop's GPU
| passes the idle quiet threshold. I have tinnitus, so the laptop
| fan noise becomes unbearable.
|
| I'm enjoying using the Mac, I mainly develop in Rust, so the
| experience has been mostly good. I've had a few hard crashes of
| other software that restarted the machine, that's fine though.
|
| I still mainly remote into my beefy Windows desktop in the other
| room, but I haven't needed to turn on my work laptop as Microsoft
| also updated Office to work on Arm64.
|
| I didn't know about Parallels, I'll try it out, as sometimes I
| can't remote into my desktop conveniently.
| thefz wrote:
| > My wife has a 2012 MBP, which is usable because I upgraded
| the RAM to 16GB and added an SSD.
|
| More or less same story with my previous Mid 2009 13'' MBP. The
| only reason why it has survived this long is because I've been
| able to add RAM, replace an SSD, replace the battery twice and
| replace a faulty touchpad too. Sadly this is no longer possible
| and modern Apple laptops are increasingly harder to repair.
| nevi-me wrote:
| Yea, Apple has great build quality. I have a 2013 HP Envy 17
| that's also survived because of the ability to replace
| (keyboard, battery 2x, SSD). Its chassis has unfortunately
| started collapsing, but I want to fix it and donate it to a
| relative.
|
| I hope these newer Macs that have everything soldered
| together, at least last 4-5 years. I'm going to try get a Mac
| as my next work device, maybe 2 years from now, so my wife
| can use my current one in future.
| webmobdev wrote:
| Yeah, right - if you choose to ignore the following:
|
| You can't upgrade the RAM, you can't upgrade the SSD, it doesn't
| have replaceable battery and you are forced to run a crippled OS
| on it (macOS Big Sur deliberately cripples VPN and firewall on it
| so that select Apple softwares can bypass them, allowing Apple
| better access and control over your data and softwares).
|
| (And if you don't care about any of the above, then sure, give
| in.)
| colordrops wrote:
| I only use Apple for my work laptop and phone since I'm already
| being spied on and they will upgrade me when I need it. It's
| perfect for that case. At home I've got an xps15 with linux and
| a phone with LineageOS. Would never apple for personal stuff.
| SubiculumCode wrote:
| cripples vpn? that is not a small thing.
| webmobdev wrote:
| It cripples some VPN apps. And some VPN softwares that used
| their own kernel extensions. More here -
| https://sneak.berlin/20201112/your-computer-isnt-yours/
| messe wrote:
| It's false. That was debunked: https://www.reddit.com/r/mac/c
| omments/k0c00f/macos_big_sur_d...
| frereubu wrote:
| If someone doesn't care about any of the above, then from their
| perspective it's not giving in.
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| Everything you prefer in life has downsides that you accept
| because the upsides outweigh the trade-offs.
| everyone wrote:
| yeah but Apple downsides are particularly infuriating cus
| they're not the result of technical limitations.. The
| downsides are _intentional_ on Apples part. They didnt try to
| engineer the most useful computer, they intentionally
| crippled various things in their OS for shady business
| reasons.
| IkmoIkmo wrote:
| As an owner of a 2015 Macbook Pro, I'm pretty okay with that.
| Haven't upgraded anything the past 6 years.
|
| Honestly I'd like an SSD and RAM upgrade but it's not that big
| of a deal. It costs money, too, and there's a bunch of stuff
| that doesn't improve with it like the CPU and battery which are
| key. And secondarily, any improvements to formfactor, screen,
| webcam, keyboard etc, although that's not as significant
| nowadays.
|
| I'd rather just sell it for a few hundred bucks now that I'm 6y
| in, and get a replacement machine with twice the battery and a
| much better CPU. I think even without resale value $1200 or so
| machine cost me like $16 a month and I think I use it about 300
| hours a month, or about 5 cent per hour. It's quite negligible
| part of my hourly/monthly wage. With resale value it's probably
| even 25-30% less, maybe 3.5 cents per hour.
|
| If I were to have spent money on upgrades, it'd be a bit
| cheaper than a full replacement - resale value, but at best
| it'd get me to 2 or 2.5 cents per hour. But I'd miss out on
| improved CPU, battery etc.
|
| Not being able to upgrade parts isn't that big of a deal to me.
| Back in the day it was, as within 2-3 years I felt I saw
| noticeable better experiences on the market with new parts. But
| today I'm quite fine purchasing an experience and having it
| last the next 5-6 years, before I upgrade. At which point I
| want a full upgrade, rather than only a few parts.
| gambiting wrote:
| I mean, you're not wrong, but all of the above apply to normal
| intel macbooks as well, so I seriously doubt it's going to
| scare off any typical apple buyers.
| messe wrote:
| > macOS Big Sur deliberately cripples VPN and firewall on it so
| that select Apple softwares can bypass them
|
| That was debunked:
| https://www.reddit.com/r/mac/comments/k0c00f/macos_big_sur_d...
| politelemon wrote:
| Read the thread carefully. The vpn part was shown to be
| normal, not the firewall.
|
| The original problem was with the firewall, there were only
| passing mentions of the vpn which op tested.
|
| Also problematic, the op released no data. Whether that works
| for you depends on your pov.
| duskwuff wrote:
| The "firewall" was Little Snitch -- which was implemented
| using a framework intended for per-application VPNs.
| heyoni wrote:
| It bypasses firewalls, or network blockers using the new
| APIs...not sure how the vpn thing got started because that
| was never part of the original claims.
| chapium wrote:
| Using a computer and extending a computer are two different
| problems. If I'm test driving a car, I'm not judging it for how
| serviceable the tires are. However, I'd factor that in for a
| purchase.
| czhiddy wrote:
| OP: "In-N-Out is my favorite fast food restaurant." You: "No,
| you're wrong."
| mhh__ wrote:
| Even if the intended meaning is that it does (in the title)
| say "best" not favourite, which is ultimately, if not
| exactly, a reasonably quantitative question.
| [deleted]
| eyelidlessness wrote:
| I'm pretty sure normally when people express "____ is the
| best _____ I've ever owned", they're implicitly saying it's
| the best "for my needs and preferences". Absent brain
| trauma or serious delusion, I would assume the person
| speaking is better able to quantify that than any outside
| observer.
| cool-RR wrote:
| OP: "Here's my opinion." Him: "Here's mine."
| boxmonster wrote:
| It seems weird to me that someone on HN would declare a
| computer that doesn't run Linux the best computer
| __jem wrote:
| I'd rather have more closely integrated hardware for a laptop.
| It's more efficient and leads to a smaller, more powerful
| device.
|
| I have a powerful desktop that I pay for incremental upgrades
| and it works great. I'm not in the Apple ecosystem, but have
| been before, and either way my goal is to have high quality
| ultrabook that serves as thin client to desktop/the cloud.
|
| Everyone has a different workflow that works for them, but I'm
| fortunate enough that upgrading an ultrabook every few years
| isn't a big deal.
| kitsunesoba wrote:
| Spot on. With desktops "loose fitting" software isn't as much
| of an issue, because there one has an appreciable margin in
| computing muscle and no concern for things like power
| efficiency, but with laptops lack of integration degrades the
| resulting product quite a lot. Software alone can be what
| makes a laptop good or bad.
|
| For someone seeking "the best of both worlds" in terms of
| integration, power efficiency, and upgradability/overall
| flexibility, that can sometimes be found in 2-3 generation
| old (where all of the hardware is solidly supported) high-end
| business laptops running some flavor of Linux, but knowing
| which models of laptop are the "good ones" as well as setting
| up Linux to run optimally on them takes a level of
| involvement and energy that not everybody is up for.
| webmobdev wrote:
| "Closely integrated" doesn't have to mean soldered rams,
| soldered ssd, or hard to replace batteries and other
| components.
| peckrob wrote:
| I can think of exactly one time in my life I have upgraded
| anything on a laptop, and that was probably more than a decade
| ago. Back when they still came with 4200rpm 2.5" hard drives,
| and I put a newer drive in a then 5 year old Dell because I
| needed it to last another few years.
|
| I did have a battery go bad in my MacBook Pro about 8 year ago,
| and it was replaced by Apple free of charge even though it was
| WAY out of warranty and I didn't have Applecare. Service like
| that alone is enough to keep me as a customer.
|
| Most of the rest of the time by the time I am ready to start
| upgrading components, I am just wanting a newer, faster machine
| in general. I am not saying these things are not important -
| the are obviously important _to you_. But Apple has figured,
| correctly in my opinion, they are are not important to a _lot_
| of people, or at the very least are not deal breakers. And more
| often than not I find myself in the latter camp.
| blizkreeg wrote:
| May be you are not their in their ideal customer profile
| anyway?
| user-the-name wrote:
| I haven't wanted to upgrade the RAM in a laptop in at least
| half a decade now.
| _huayra_ wrote:
| What about paying the OEM markup for the RAM they install?
| god knows if I paid Lenovo for maxing out the RAM specs
| instead of just pay it from newegg at the like I'd be in the
| poor house!
| youeseh wrote:
| My maxed out 2015 13" Macbook Pro runs as strong as ever. I
| paid more up front and have had no regrets since, and no need
| to upgrade any of the internals.
| ProZsolt wrote:
| How is your battery life, I only get around two hours.
| Changing it would cost me 200 GBP.
| dharma1 wrote:
| Bought one for my kid, been testing it out and it's so good that
| I'm tempted to buy one myself - much better than any of the
| recent mbpro's I've had. Super responsive while staying cool on
| the lap, completely silent and all day battery life.
|
| Can't wait for mbpros with miniled display and more arm cores
| later this year.
| sfblah wrote:
| My kids use Chromebooks. Macs are a little pricey.
| archsurface wrote:
| Is this post even about the macbook? Nix, homebrew, go,
| terraform, ... ?
| bserge wrote:
| _[deleted]_
| archsurface wrote:
| I don't see how that makes it a great laptop. It's a very low
| bar to say that the software working makes it a great laptop.
| I'd call that par.
| ttul wrote:
| Since getting my M1, I can now barely tolerate using my 2019
| high-spec'ed iMac. Nearly all interactions with the UI appear to
| be instantaneous. I can't describe what a positive experience
| that is. It's cognitively very rewarding to use.
| efwfwef wrote:
| I have the MacBook Air 2018 (13-inch, 1.6 GHz i5, 16 GB memory)
| and it gets pretty slow for my dev side-projects, the battery is
| good but definitely not as good as my iPad pro (but much better
| than my macbook pro), and my keyboard has been acting, I got a
| replacement, and now it's acting again... Without the keyboard
| issue, and the slowness, it'd really be perfect.
| bouke wrote:
| Nice post, makes me wanna dump my 16" as well and if it weren't
| for my work's heavy dependency on Windows. -- O and I really dig
| your domain name! ;-)
| RomeoDelta wrote:
| I am no Apple fanatic. I'm a die-hard Linux user and open source
| proponent. I wouldn't touch the M1 with a thirty-nine and a half
| foot pole.
|
| But with all that said... I kind of like articles like these. I
| enjoy seeing people happy with good tech because _I_ like good
| tech. It pleases me that there are people getting this much
| enjoyment out of innovative and (I 'll admit it) quite impressive
| hardware. So rock on, Apple fans. But when there's a Linux
| computer that is even a bit better, I hope you can tolerate me
| shouting from the rooftops, because you bet I will be!
| vernie wrote:
| Are you keeping an eye on the Asahi Linux project or is the
| Apple hardware a non-starter?
| 7402 wrote:
| The world is a better place when someone can disagree with
| another's opinion, and yet still take pleasure in their
| happiness.
| fvv wrote:
| I feel the same and hope that moment will come in about 1.5y
| zen4 5nm ddr5 64gb ecc 2tb nvme linux laptop ..without having
| to trade my body parts to buy it :)
| aquir wrote:
| Sounds awesome! Can you share what type of laptop are you
| using?
| fvv wrote:
| Right now it,s an xmg which is a seller of clevo probably i
| will remain with that because I can change parts without
| voiding warranty , my reseller leave me add rm and hdd of
| my choice after the sale, i can buy without hdd and ram..
| aalso have swappable battery and even if touchpad may not
| be apple quality i usually use mouse or trackball , but
| with the next I'll take a look at what Lenovo, hp dell etc
| will offer by that time , about linux compatibility and
| drivers.. I'm quite sure is improving every year.. except
| for macbooks ;)
| aquir wrote:
| Thanks, I'll have a look!
| bouk wrote:
| I hope you get to experience that! My worst computer recently
| has been a Thinkpad running Linux, basic things like suspending
| the laptop when it closes just never work properly.
|
| But I'm sure the year of Linux on the desktop will come one
| day.
| fvv wrote:
| I'm not experienced with thinkpad but I do have some laptops
| and desktop and in all of those suspension and hibernation
| works, require swap but even with zfs raid over luks layer
| with zil on pcie mounted optane on old ubuntu 18.04 things
| worked.. but i agree that on some hardware linux sometimes
| need patience :( hope that will change.. but probably to
| change linux need more love from desktop users ..
| Tistel wrote:
| I have been using Linux for a little over 20 years. I
| remarked a the start it did not sleep when it closed. My
| current laptop is also Linux and it _still_ does not always
| sleep when I close it. I need to get up to speed on BSD or
| something.
| pletsch wrote:
| On Ubuntu:
|
| sudo nano /etc/systemd/logind.conf
|
| Looking for HandleLidSwitch, options are lock, hibernate,
| poweroff (might be more that I am unaware of)
| dghf wrote:
| What distro? I've run Arch Linux on a ThinkPad, and suspend-
| on-lid-close worked perfectly out of the box.
| pjmlp wrote:
| It won't get better than this,
|
| https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/install-win10
|
| https://chromeos.dev/en/linux
|
| Unless the fragmented desktop communities finally decide what
| the whole stack should be like, for users and desktop
| developers.
| mhh__ wrote:
| > It won't get better than this,
|
| Microsoft don't let you access perf_event, which
| immediately makes it useless for me for example.
|
| It's not really fragmentation as much as there not being
| being a billion dollar company making the stack actually
| work in the first place - if Apple decided to rebase onto
| Linux for some reason there's nothing stopping them getting
| everything shipshape just that it takes a lot of time and
| money. The vast majority of Linux boxes distro's are
| probably pareto distributed so 20-80 to make up a random
| number. The stack isn't that sparse.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Apple will never bother again with GPL software, while
| Google would rather migrate everyone to Fuchsia if they
| could, IBM is focused on making Linux a good citizen for
| cloud and mainframe computing, Oracle just wants to make
| it run their database stack, so that leaves out
| Microsoft, in what concerns billion dollar companies that
| would care to do that.
| mhh__ wrote:
| That has nothing to do with what I said.
| xirbeosbwo1234 wrote:
| Which Thinkpad and which distro? I've always found them
| reliable, but I've only used ones from about 2012 and have
| stuck with Ubuntu.
| dingaling wrote:
| Well at least on Linux someone has a chance at debugging the
| problem and devising a solution.
| davewritescode wrote:
| Technically you're correct, your comment just begs the
| question: if it's so easy to fix why hasn't it been done?
|
| The answer is probably because to make things like sleep on
| lid close work, you're probably going to need to know more
| about the hardware than manufacturers are going to make
| public.
| ezluckyfree wrote:
| they seem good and stuff but Mac OS and the Mac ecosystem are
| awful
| longtimegoogler wrote:
| I just bought one and my reaction was, meh.
| pachico wrote:
| Regardless of what computer that is, having what you think it is
| the best computer you ever had is such a great sensation, at
| least for me that I spend at lease 9 hours a day in front of it.
| In my case it's a Dell XPS, but it doesn't matter.
|
| Treasure this sensation, it won't last forever :)
| mkaic wrote:
| I just built my first PC about a month ago and am still in that
| phase. Went from a 2013 laptop with integrated GPU to having a
| much nicer discrete GPU and the difference still blows me away
| on the daily :)
| pachico wrote:
| I suspect you would enjoy it that much even if it wasn't so
| much superior to your old laptop, but just because you built
| it yourself.
| amelius wrote:
| "owned"
| messe wrote:
| Yep, a machine owned by the user. They're free to install
| whatever software they want on it, including the OS. Now, it
| happens that Linux and other free OSes don't support the
| hardware yet, but that doesn't diminish the fact that they can
| be ported.
|
| Is there a particular point you'd like to make?
| amelius wrote:
| > Now, it happens that Linux and other free OSes don't
| support the hardware yet, but that doesn't diminish the fact
| that they can be ported.
|
| Is the specification of the M1 processor including the GPU
| part open then?
|
| And can the laptop be repaired by the user?
| harperlee wrote:
| I can make the point that those "ownership" quotes would very
| well apply to iphone and ipad, based on your OS
| installability criterium.
| messe wrote:
| Other than the fact that those require a jailbreak to do
| so, and are far more locked down than the M1 Macs because
| of that.
| harperlee wrote:
| Yes, that's exactly my point.
| RobRivera wrote:
| is it built like a tank?
| dehrmann wrote:
| A tank that grinds into your wrists.
| niftylettuce wrote:
| tldr; I got a Macbook Pro M1 for $975 in mint-condition at a Best
| Buy and already put the return label on it.
|
| While Geekbench showed great results, actual usage of the machine
| and headaches ensued were contrasting.
|
| To put it bluntly - M1 machines are currently unstable. There are
| numerous Bluetooth issues [1], formatting issues [2], Wifi 6
| issues [3], VPN issues [4], firewall issues [5], and shocking
| security issues in general with Big Sur and Apple's silicon [6].
|
| I'm a power user and this is way too experimental for actual use.
| At the least get the 16 GB variant if you want to get anything
| done and not experience freeze/lockup (but for that much money
| you're better off with Librem 14" or System76 w/AMD
| Threadripper).
|
| [1]:
| https://www.reddit.com/r/mac/comments/kpu2hy/mouse_lag_when_...
|
| [2]: https://mrmacintosh.com/reinstalling-big-sur-on-apple-
| silico...
|
| [3]:
| https://www.reddit.com/r/mac/comments/jy3yc7/is_anyone_else_...
|
| [4]: https://mullvad.net/en/blog/2020/11/16/big-no-big-sur-
| mullva...
|
| [5]: https://github.com/objective-see/LuLu/issues/208
|
| [6]: https://sneak.berlin/20201204/on-trusting-macintosh-
| hardware...
| _huayra_ wrote:
| "You're just using it wrong" /s
|
| https://www.wired.com/2010/06/iphone-4-holding-it-wrong/
| thejellypen wrote:
| I returned mine too
| masswerk wrote:
| To be fair, none of these issues seem to be related to the M1
| hardware, but to some issues and choices made with Big Sur.
| DennisAleynikov wrote:
| its very frustrating trying to battle the people who
|
| a) have never used an arm laptop b) think legacy apps run
| well c) think benchmarks are cool
|
| its beyond impossible to dissuade someone from making the
| mistake of buying apples first gen chromebook without
| properly researching what they did to neuter macos to
| accomplish this.
|
| basically every other reply here is too busy not realising A
| and singing praises to C
| bgorman wrote:
| I have a MacBook Air 2020 (Intel).
|
| After upgrading to Big Sur, I have experiences a general
| degradation of performance, graphical glitches and serious
| Bluetooth problems (failing to connect to Apple mouse and
| keyboard).
|
| The fundamental problem seems to be that with proprietary
| consumer hardware/software- only the initial version is
| reviewed and after that the vendor can push software full of
| bugs with no consequences.
| nojito wrote:
| I find comments like these more telling of flawed workflows and
| not of the device.
|
| For comparison's sake, we just rolled out ~100 of these in my
| department and the reception has been nothing less than
| stellar.
| niftylettuce wrote:
| Did you view the links? There are core problems with
| Bluetooth, Wifi 6, and security of the device (not workflow).
|
| I don't think my workflow is flawed, here's what it produces:
| https://github.com/niftylettuce
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| izacus wrote:
| [This ad sponsored by Apple Inc.] ?
| adamredwoods wrote:
| I'm still on a MacBook Pro 2011. Chrome runs great. Newer Xcode
| doesn't work, though.
| sandGorgon wrote:
| Here's the intersting part - there's no alternative to that
| price/performance ratio for atleast a year.
| atemerev wrote:
| I have bought an M1, and so far I am slightly disappointed. Intel
| macbook pro was quite fine, too. Firefox is still occasionally
| slow. No significant improvements in compilation speed (well,
| homebrew still relies on Rosetta 2). Instant wakeup is cool, but
| not a life-changing improvement. Etc.
| bouk wrote:
| Homebrew works without Rosetta 2, maybe you have to reinstall
| it so it runs natively. It should be installed under
| /opt/homebrew
| dukeofdoom wrote:
| I'm reluctant to buy it because of ports, and tiny amount of
| drive space. Waiting for the 14 inch, hoping for more ports,
| larger base hard drive, and new design for similar cost of
| upgrading the air.
| breck wrote:
| I got the 1TB SSD. Wouldn't call that tiny. Then I have
| external arrays for bigger datasets.
|
| How much space would you need? IIRC they go up to 2TB or maybe
| even 4TB.
| webmobdev wrote:
| It's expensive and is still not upgradeable is the point.
| nevi-me wrote:
| How about the RAM? I'm assuming that you got 16GB? I thought
| 8GB would be barely usable for me, but I've been pleasantly
| surprised.
|
| I still use my desktop for heavy enough work, but 8GB is
| manageable for now.
| angulardragon03 wrote:
| The SSD is so fast that swapping pages in and out of memory
| is barely noticeable until you are really cranking up the
| memory pressure.
| nevi-me wrote:
| I'm trying to find out how much faster than a typical
| PCIe4 nvme SSD, which I have on my desktop. I'm not
| finding anything useful. Do you haave an idea?
| phonon wrote:
| M1 MacBook Air: 2,190.1 MB/s write, 2,676.4 MB/s read
|
| https://www.iphoneincanada.ca/news/m1-air-benchmark/
| breck wrote:
| Yes I went with 16GB. Would have been nicer to have more,
| but generally I need <16GB or >500GB
| dukeofdoom wrote:
| The 256 is too small for me, I edit videos sometimes. $200+
| to upgrade the internal drive. I'm hoping the 14 inch will
| come with a larger internal drive, and more upgrades.
| dogma1138 wrote:
| Samsung has quite cheap high speed external SSDs the T5 is
| like $150 for the 1TB drives now.
|
| USB type C Gen 2 10gig is fast enough for most video
| editing especially any editing you could do on a device
| like the M1.
|
| Personally if I was editing videos I would be using an
| external storage device both due to the capacity and the
| fact that my data is then portable.
|
| With the full disk encryption on the M1 I wouldn't be
| storing anything other than your scratch pad unless you can
| guarantee a 24/7 backup as you go scheme anyhow since any
| failure would like be irrecoverable.
| jackson1442 wrote:
| +1 on the Samsung SSDs. I have mine partitioned 500/500
| for backup and external storage and it works wonderfully.
| jsjohnst wrote:
| I was just about to reply the same. I own a handful of
| Samsung T5 and T7 SSD drives (the new T7 being twice as
| fast, but also more expensive) and they are great. 1-2TB
| is sufficient as the internal HD _for me_ (aka make no
| representation of other's needs) and everything else goes
| on my NAS or when remote a SSD HD like the T5 /T7. When I
| need extreme performance (aka video editing usually),
| I've got a Samsung X5 which uses TB3 and NVMe to get
| nearly 3GB/s speeds. If they weren't so expensive, I'd
| use only the X5s, but instead have a mix of T5/T7/X5 for
| various purposes.
| dogma1138 wrote:
| And potentially if you edit videos even portable SSDs
| aren't enough.
|
| Raw 8K RED footage at 75 FPS which is what you would be
| recording at if you master at 4K 60* is about 120GB a
| minute that's over 7TB an hour.
|
| No reasonable internal drive could support that and
| you'll be looking at a high speed NAS or an NVME JBOD/DAS
| solution to support that.
|
| *The extra frames and pixels are really important for
| final mastering as you need extra bits to do image
| stabilization, cropping, color grading and sharpening
| correctly it also makes more complex post processing work
| easier to perform even things like rotoscoping are much
| easier to do when your objects are twice the size and you
| have much less pixel bleed between what you want to roto
| and the rest of the frame.
| mrehler wrote:
| Agreed. It's tempting given how old my current MBP is, but I
| priced out a 16" MBP last year to budget for, and the 2TB
| drive, 32GB RAM, and 16" of screen size (especially since Big
| Sur is Big Sur) are too many compromises to make to jump on the
| M1 Macs today.
| cheeze wrote:
| If it's this good according to folks already, I cant wait to
| see what gen2 looks like. Not a big apple fan but I'll be
| closely looking at the next generation of these in a year or
| so.
| bouk wrote:
| Yep I had to get a dock, but it's fine. I just plug in one
| cable and everything is connected.
| joegahona wrote:
| Which dock? I have a dock and still have all four ports on my
| MBP 16 filled up too.
| bouk wrote:
| I got this one:
| https://www.anker.com/de/products/variant/anker-8in1-usbc-
| hu...
| daemonk wrote:
| Yeah, the combination of features at the right quality level
| makes it the best laptop I've ever owned.
| fiddlerwoaroof wrote:
| Third here (although I have the MBP): I particularly enjoy the
| battery life, I mostly use my laptop unplugged again.
| sam1r wrote:
| Amen.
| sam1r wrote:
| Or should one say, awomen.
|
| http://awomen.urbanup.com/6512560
| timvisee wrote:
| You're talking about software here. You'd have the same
| experience on almost any macbook. In fact, for the things you're
| describing you'd probably have a better experience with a non M1
| machine. There's only one line that is related to the actual M1
| MacBook Air hardware.
|
| Have you tried other machines as well, such as a ThinkPad? Have
| you ever used Linux?
| bouk wrote:
| Yes I'm talking about Software because it has a new CPU
| architecture. I have used a thinkpad with Linux and it was a
| terrible experience.
| soperj wrote:
| >It is even the best Windows PC
|
| The delusion is very strong here.
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| Huh? Windows with WSL is such a bad experience that running
| Windows apps on Mac OS is far superior to me, even with Wine. I
| also think it's the best Linux machine. It's not very hard to
| do.
|
| Can we stop with the ridiculous condescension ("delusional")
| towards opinions we disagree with and make no effort to
| interpret charitably?
| webmobdev wrote:
| When you say it is "the best Linux machine" with a straight
| face, I am sure it is hard not to invite such condescension!
| The M1 can barely run Linux on it, if at all.
| dev_tty01 wrote:
| Just a guess on my part, but he may have meant "unix" and
| is using "Linux" incorrectly. Mac OS is a unix system.
| Linux has become so common that I have heard many people
| say Linux when they mean the more general term unix. Let's
| assume the best instead of the worst.
| jeffbee wrote:
| Running Windows in a VM has long been more satisfactory in
| certain ways than running it on real hardware (for example,
| applying updates in a VM takes seconds instead of hours because
| the VM doesn't drop your block caches when it reboots). I can
| see why the author could be pleased with the outcome.
| vmception wrote:
| Actually, I'm glad to see that the Windows virtualization work
| is moving so quickly.
|
| I would have skipped this article if I didn't see your cynicism
| about this very topic.
|
| Windows is just a "nice to have" for me, in the list of
| priorities, but not having it had been a deal breaker for that
| specific machine. now its not.
| porcc wrote:
| https://youtu.be/OhESSZIXvCA?t=439
|
| windows in a VM outperforms windows PCs at the price point--
| plus like other commenters mention it comes with a native Unix
| shell
| kcb wrote:
| It outperforms that specific Qualcomm soc. Not Windows PCs as
| a whole in that price point.
| mhh__ wrote:
| > windows PCs at the price point
|
| PS999 is a lot of PC. The processor in the M1 air is about
| 20% faster than the one in my laptop (PS550 IIRC), but to
| spec an M1 out with the same amount of storage and RAM brings
| it to PS1999.
| neogodless wrote:
| "Delusion" may be too strong a word here, but "ignorance" is
| almost certainly not.
|
| Though to be sure, "PC" means "personal computer" and for _this
| individual_ it might be the exact best experience they _could
| have_ running Windows. It just isn 't for a great deal of other
| people because they value different things.
|
| I value GPU power, installing Steam, Battle.net (with maxed out
| settings), ~15" screens and a few other things that make my HP
| Omen 15 the best Windows laptop I've ever owned. And I value
| selecting and assembling my own components, performance value,
| tricked out RGB lighting and large high resolution external
| monitors, so my custom desktop is the best Windows desktop I've
| ever owned.
|
| But I certainly don't get the mobility or battery life of an M1
| Macbook. So if you value those things highly enough, you may
| get a better Windows PC experience on one.
| Hamuko wrote:
| Depends on what you prioritise. If you value silent operation
| and heaps of battery life, I imagine it is.
| dang wrote:
| Maybe so, but please don't post unsubstantive comments to HN
| and please omit name-calling.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| systemvoltage wrote:
| Except the interface which has been designed for touch interfaces
| without having any touch capability on the Mac, for the sake of
| "design unity" bullshit. You can't have M1 without macOS Big Sur.
|
| Not only on macOS, but generally the entire web is mobile-first
| and desktop-last philosophy.
| valuearb wrote:
| Blatantly false assertion. No touch design changes in Big Sur,
| confirmed by Hair Force One.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| The following explains and illustrates the problems with
| macOS and how they've shoehorned design changes that do not
| belong to Desktop environments.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXG5REBi2fo
| valuearb wrote:
| No, it's a rant with little to no factual support and an
| entire lack of perspective.
|
| Again, there is no evidence any Big Sur UI changes were to
| support touch screens. Bigger button areas make computers
| easier to use, just as bigger tap areas make mobile devices
| easier to use.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| What kind of evidence are you seeking?
| nicbou wrote:
| I like Big Sur. Everything works just as well with the mouse as
| before. They made many quality of life improvements to the
| touch bar, and didn't mess with the other things.
|
| What exactly was made worse by it?
| systemvoltage wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25072644
|
| Instead of repeating same things over, there has been plenty
| of discussion on HN about macOS big sur design changes.
| user-the-name wrote:
| Do you not have opinions on your own that you can express?
| jeswin wrote:
| I think we really need a break from people submitting more M1 Mac
| unboxing articles, unless there's significant original technical
| content. This is turning into fanboyism.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| This article was somewhat substantiative from a technical
| (hacker) dev setup point of view, but also a little scanty.
| Homebrew, Go, and Parallels use on Apple Silicon have all been
| brought up before.
|
| I do agree that there's enough articles covering the same
| review feedback. The M1 machines seem to be universally lauded,
| there's plenty of buzz out there, I'm not sure what the
| downside is there besides certain software not being able to
| run on them yet. Personally I'm willing to wait a year to see
| what the second gen machines will look like, but that's based
| on my own preferences and curiosity.
| dagaci wrote:
| They probably have a quota to fill. Apple spending an ocean of
| cash on pushing this project.
| kowlo wrote:
| Are you implying the OP or HN itself are promoting the M1
| line for $?
| DennisAleynikov wrote:
| beyond ridiculous conspiracy, apple just took the ARM pill
| finally and release a "real os" running on arm and every
| closeted anti-ipad and anti-chromeos user finally breathed
| a sigh of relief that "real computers" can be good again,
| finally
| [deleted]
| dang wrote:
| Please review the site guidelines--they ask you not to post
| like this.
|
| If you have evidence, or are worried about abuse, email
| hn@ycombinator.com and we'll look into it.
| JoshTko wrote:
| The voting system reflects HN sentiment, which generally isn't
| particularly pro Apple, so the implication is that M1 is quite
| special.
| [deleted]
| smoldesu wrote:
| I wholeheartedly agree.
| bouk wrote:
| It's just... really good. It's an uncanny feeling that many
| haven't had for a while
| mortenjorck wrote:
| The MacBook's past few years in the wilderness gave a lot of
| Mac users some real uncertainty about the future of their
| preferred platform. To see not just a return to form but an
| epochal step forward is something of a unique moment -
| there's both relief and excitement.
| smoldesu wrote:
| Sure, but it's also a device that makes up less than .1% of
| the desktop market share. For most HN users, reading about
| the M1 Mac is like peoplewatching from your office window:
| it's a cool upgrade for consumers, but ARM is such a major
| departure from the rest of the industry that it verges on
| disinteresting. Hell, reviews of the Surface Pro X told much
| the story: the device was fast on native software, but it's
| idiosyncrasies were what killed it in the end. Most reviewers
| gave it a 6 or 7 and then tossed it back on the shelf, where
| it probably still is today. The M1 had another year in
| development, and now a slightly larger portion of the desktop
| market share can use it as a daily driver. The people who
| amplify those voices are not doing anyone any favors,
| especially if we're trying to keep an objectively interesting
| news site well-stocked.
| bserge wrote:
| It's revolutionary, something Apple hasn't done in a while,
| but is still good at!
| DennisAleynikov wrote:
| its really not...
|
| I would advise you to try something outside of apple once the
| m1 dies on ya (in like a decade)
| messe wrote:
| > its really not...
|
| How so?
| DennisAleynikov wrote:
| any chromebook will show you roughly what I mean.
|
| the approach with running ios apps with catalyst, safari
| being faster than on ANY intel device, and most guides
| recommending you use webapps
|
| thats mostly what I mean. people have had a repulsion to
| chromebooks or even windows 10 S but apple did not do
| much more than just that. the praise isnt coming for how
| amazingly working in production through rosetta is
| Hamuko wrote:
| > _any chromebook will show you roughly what I mean._
|
| Where does a Chromebook come into this?
| DennisAleynikov wrote:
| what macos big sur essentially is:
|
| chrome first (safari) play store apps (catalyst for ios
| apps) linux apps (unix apps homebrew)
|
| a lot of folks arent familiar with how identical these
| software stacks have become over the last few years.
| especially with apples quality control dropping so
| steeply to allowing Catalyst apps to be something they
| mention on stage despite their sorry state as somehow
| more broken than android apps on chromeos
| mkl wrote:
| The excitement about the M1 computers is not about the
| software, but about the new CPU design, which is faster
| than any other laptop processor by most measures I've
| seen. Chromebooks have no equivalent.
| [deleted]
| erwincoumans wrote:
| Hardware is most impressive indeed, but software as well,
| in particular Rosetta 2, the translation works well. Also
| the hypervisor works well, Parallels desktop flies with
| arm versions of Ubuntu and Windows.
| Hamuko wrote:
| That doesn't make any sense.
| [deleted]
| enos_feedler wrote:
| For me, getting strong signal on the consumer sentiment of new
| Apple products helps me make trading decisions and is super
| useful. I welcome this content, fanboy or not. How are these
| submissions impacting you negatively?
| splintercell wrote:
| And lets not forget, HN egged the function key row
| elimination a lot (rightfully so).
| Jonnax wrote:
| There's a lot of love for the M1 Macs. Medium send me emails of
| recommended articles and always at least one is a blog about how
| good it is.
|
| What are the issues people have been experiencing? No laptop is
| perfect.
| cehrlich wrote:
| The laptops only support 1 external monitor unless you do some
| hacky stuff, they only have two ports, and still have mediocre
| webcams, and you're forced to use Big Sur which still needs a
| bit of work. Also while the vast majority of software runs
| great on the M1, there are a few very niche things that still
| don't.
|
| But I wouldn't call these "issues", as anyone who reads the
| spec sheet can know them before purchase.
|
| That's it, really. These computers are astonishingly good.
| loh wrote:
| The most interesting thing about this to me was the bit at the
| end about Windows and Games. I've heard of Windows emulation on
| Mac before but this is the first time I've heard of Parallels.
|
| > Now you can download Steam and basically install anything and
| it will probably work. Microsoft really did some amazing magic in
| getting both 32-bit and 64-bit x86 programs running on arm64.
|
| The author makes it sound like you can run basically all Windows
| software on Mac without issues with Parallel, including more
| demanding software like games you'd find on Steam.
|
| Does anyone here have experience with Parallels? How does
| performance compare? My assumption with this kind of emulation
| was always that performance would typically suffer too much for
| it to be worth it.
| deevolution wrote:
| Parallels has been around for a while... I used it to play the
| homeworld franchise years ago but more recently I have used
| bootcamp. Not sure about performance on M1 tho.
| nwotnagrom wrote:
| I prefer browser based options such as shells.com where you can
| actually just access Windows or Linux on a virtual cloud
| computer. Much easier than messing with Parallels...
| emrah wrote:
| I have Parallels and my experience on my intel MBP is gaming is
| not very good on it. It's mostly graphics support that is
| lacking I believe. I'm not sure how M1/arm support would make
| it work better but I sure hope so.
| [deleted]
| stevefan1999 wrote:
| ...and is probably one of the least libre* computer I've seen in
| the 21th century, too.
|
| Before that, Linux can't run on MacBooks, and after a few years
| of development it's just barely working, now this thing.
|
| This is never going to be Desktop Linux compatible. Even Linus
| claimed he would like to but the effort is tremendous.
|
| >>>
|
| I'd absolutely love to have one, if it just ran Linux.. I have
| fairly fond memories of the 11" Macbook Air (I think 4,1) that I
| used about a decade ago (but moved away from because it took
| Apple too long to fix the screen - and by the time they did, I'd
| moved on to better laptops, and Apple had moved on to make Linux
| less convenient).
|
| Apple may run Linux in their cloud, but their laptops don't ;(
|
| I've been waiting for an ARM laptop that can run Linux for a long
| time. The new Air would be almost perfect, except for the OS. And
| I don't have the time to tinker with it, or the inclination to
| fight companies that don't want to help.
|
| Linus
|
| >>>
|
| Maybe you can run just some more productivity apps by sacrificing
| your freedom to be kept captive by Apple. But this also means
| your machine isn't entirely yours.
|
| *: used liberal here. I don't know what's the exactly word to use
| but it turns out there are people so sensitive to politics and
| thought the otherwise.
| valuearb wrote:
| Now our politics are determined by what computer we own?
| ChrisRR wrote:
| Liberal adjective
|
| willing to respect or accept behaviour or opinions different
| from one's own; open to new ideas.
| jraph wrote:
| as in: "Be liberal in what you accept, and strict in what
| you produce"
| artiszt wrote:
| good to know that one really does own Windows 10 [crippled]
| machines
| stevefan1999 wrote:
| I do. I have a Yoga 530. While the motherboard is highly
| integrated I can at least replace my own RAM, my own NVME
| drive and my own OS. You can't do all these with a MacBook.
|
| You can argue that the NVME drive is somewhat able to
| upgrade, but even that there will be some cautions ahead.
| paddim8 wrote:
| Actually, Linux might actually run quite well on it soon.
| https://asahilinux.org/
| mhh__ wrote:
| > Might
|
| Ignoring that it's completely up to apple whether this exists
| in a years time, reverse engineering an _entire_ SOC is
| really fucking hard. ARM isn 't like x86, you basically can't
| assume anything. The GPU may be completely off limits for
| years, for example, unless they somehow (this isn't
| impossible) make a blob out of Apple's actual drivers.
| christkv wrote:
| It will take some time to get a GPU driver I imagine
| Lammy wrote:
| Looks like it "might" "soon" start booting a kernel:
| https://github.com/AsahiLinux/docs/wiki/Project-status
| xirbeosbwo1234 wrote:
| New computer is better than old computer. Shocking.
|
| The M1 is a good chip. It is great that we have ARM cores that
| can go toe-to-toe with Zen 3. It is hardly a revolution and it
| would not be trivial to scale it to a workstation or server
| design.
|
| It is telling to see someone acting like the competition is still
| Intel. Intel has been playing catchup since Q1 of 2017. Their
| server parts in particular are woefully outdated.
| valuearb wrote:
| Toe to toe? It starches every Ryzen chip in single core
| performance, and every mobile Ryzen under 45 watts TDP in
| multicore despite only having 4 performance cores and 15 Watts
| TDP.
| adrian_b wrote:
| You are correct only about Ryzens based on the old Zen 2.
|
| Any new Ryzen 5xxx based on Zen 3 is faster in single-thread
| than the best Apple M1.
|
| In general-purpose benchmarks, like Geekbench 5, the maximum
| Apple M1 score is 1752, while Ryzen 5xxx score between 1800
| and 1876.
|
| In computational benchmarks, where the IPC is limited by some
| execution resources reaching 100% utilization, so the higher
| _average_ IPC of Apple M1 does matter much less, Apple M1 is
| even slower compared to Ryzens. For example Ryzen 7 5800X is
| 22% faster than Apple M1 in gmpbench (the benchmark was run
| for both CPUs after tuning specific to Apple M1 and tuning
| specific to Zen 3 were added to libgmp, so it is a comparison
| of apples with apples).
| valuearb wrote:
| https://browser.geekbench.com/processors/amd-ryzen-7-5800x
|
| The 5800x is a 105 watt part(!!!), still gets starched by
| the M1 in single core, and is only about 40% faster in
| multicore despite using all that power to drive double the
| performance core count.
|
| But by all means, go off to cherry pick more niche
| benchmarks...
| xirbeosbwo1234 wrote:
| https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/5806255
|
| The 5950X has double the core count of the 5800X but only
| manages a 1.6x improvement in multithreaded performance.
|
| https://browser.geekbench.com/processors/amd-ryzen-
| threadrip...
|
| The 3990X is the most powerful desktop part on the
| market. It gets merely a 1.4x speedup over the 5950X
| despite having four times the core count. (Granted, the
| 5950X core is somewhat better).
|
| Geekbench isn't terribly useful at the best of times.
| It's particularly bad when comparing across architectures
| and operating systems. And, as should be clear, its
| multithreaded test does not scale linearly with core
| count. You should never take the ratio between two scores
| to mean the ratio between performance, especially when
| comparing multithreaded scores with different core
| counts.
| adrian_b wrote:
| I did not cherry pick any benchmarks, I have picked the
| only 2 benchmarks that have been published for both Apple
| M1 and for Zen 3, and that were also freely available, so
| I could also run them on my own computer, to verify that
| the published benchmark results are correct.
|
| They are not niche benchmarks. Geekbench 5 covers many
| common application domains and its only flaw is that the
| GB5 tests are very short so they finish before the CPU
| overheats and slows down, so this benchmark is much more
| favorable for Apple M1 than for a desktop CPU.
|
| Even if GB5 is advantageous for M1, it still shows that
| Zen 3 is faster.
|
| gmpbench tests a fundamental feature of any CPU, its
| ability to compute operations with large numbers. That
| may not matter for you but it is definitely one of the
| important criteria for measuring the single-thread speed
| of a processor, so when Apple M1 scores 6422 and a Ryzen
| 7 5800X (not the fastest Ryzen) scores 7816, there is no
| doubt about which starches which.
|
| Moreover, the multi-thread results that I have seen for
| Geekbench 5, which very strongly favors Apple M1 (because
| in a real application M1 would overheat soon and it would
| slow down) show a 60% higher speed for 5800X, not of 40%,
| e.g. 12339 for 5800X vs. 7716 for Apple M1.
|
| If you want to live with the illusion that Apple M1 is
| faster in single-thread execution than Zen 3, even if all
| the real numbers from benchmark results contradict you,
| that is your privilege.
| mhh__ wrote:
| What does "starches" mean?
| xirbeosbwo1234 wrote:
| >Toe to toe? It starches every Ryzen chip in single core
| performance
|
| It most certainly does not. It trades blows, winning on some
| benchmarks and losing others. It seems a bit ahead on
| floating-point workloads and a bit behind on integer
| workloads.
|
| https://www.anandtech.com/show/16252/mac-mini-
| apple-m1-teste...
|
| It _does_ simply outperform every Intel design. That 's
| great, but not enough to make it the fastest core in the
| world. It, to no one's surprise, falls behind the parts with
| higher core counts.
|
| Caveats:
|
| 1. These benchmarks are preliminary. We are, by necessity,
| comparing across operating systems and architectures.
|
| 2. Comparing single-threaded performance between a SMT system
| and one without SMT is a little misleading, since a non-SMT
| core is worse than an SMT core even if the single-threaded
| performance is similar.
|
| 3. I have no clue how to handle the big.LITTLE architecture.
| I've never used a machine with heterogeneous cores and have
| never written any software for it. It is certainly a benefit
| to efficiency. It _probably_ improves performance on highly-
| threaded workloads, but I am not sure.
|
| I find myself annoyed by these discussions. I love new
| hardware! I find this chip very impressive! It is the best
| chip in the world in performance-per-watt! It is clearly the
| best mobile chip on the market! It has a lot of interesting
| accelerators! Please stop forcing me to be the naysayer.
| valuearb wrote:
| M1 is either first or very close to first in all the
| Anandtech benchmarks against CPUs using up to seven times
| more power.
| xirbeosbwo1234 wrote:
| As I said, toe to toe. The M1 and the 5950X are both
| clearly ahead of the Intel parts and they trade first and
| second place between them. On the aggregate graph (the
| last one on the page), you can see that the 5950x is
| ahead on integer workloads while the M1 is ahead on
| floating point. You will notice this is exactly what I
| said.
|
| >using up to seven times more power.
|
| Power efficiency is where the M1 definitely wins. It is
| among the best on the planet for single-threaded
| performance and definitely the best for efficiency.
|
| Your 7x figure, however, is not accurate. You are
| comparing TDP. That is the wrong number. TDP is
| calculated differently by each manufacturer. It relates
| to how big a CPU cooler you will need to ensure the CPU
| never throttles to avoid overheating, not to how long
| your battery will last.
|
| Take a look at the following, in particular the big
| black-and-green-and-red charts in the middle of the page:
|
| https://www.anandtech.com/show/16214/amd-zen-3-ryzen-
| deep-di...
|
| (Those are desktop parts. I'd obviously like to compare
| mobile ones, but I am not familiar with AMD's mobile
| lineup and there are no Zen 3 mobile parts. They'll still
| help make my point.)
|
| Note that the power draw at idle (where the CPU will
| spend most of its time) is 10-20 watts for all these
| CPUs. This would be lower for mobile Ryzen parts, of
| course. This is the big advantage of the M1: with its
| big.LITTLE architecture, it will be able to shut down the
| big cores entirely and use vastly less power than any x86
| part at idle.
|
| Note that the power draw at 100% usage is _higher_ than
| the stated TDP. The CPU can draw more power than it says
| on the box if the system detects it has adequate thermal
| headroom. It will also draw _less_ power, even at 100%
| usage, if it starts getting too hot or if the user
| chooses to lower the TDP.
|
| Note that the power consumption varies with the number of
| cores that are active, but that this relationship is
| nothing close to linear. A CPU can hit its peak power at
| a small fraction of maximum load, but performance will
| continue to scale all the way to maximum load. The big
| chips are more efficient than the small ones when both
| are fully loaded.
|
| You can't just say "a chip with N times the TDP draws N
| times more power". The two parts will draw different
| amounts of power and have different efficiency tradeoffs
| depending on how they are used.
|
| What, then, is the correct metric? I don't know of a
| single number that tells the whole story. I can tell you
| that the M1 is efficient both at idle and under load. I
| will make no effort to quantify how efficient it is other
| than to say TDP is irrelevant.
| adrian_b wrote:
| Apple M1 is definitely faster than any other CPU whose
| power consumption is reduced at the same value.
|
| At identical power consumptions, an Apple M1 core is
| faster by about 30% to 40% than an Intel Tiger Lake or an
| AMD Zen 3.
|
| All older Intel/AMD CPUs are even much slower.
|
| Nevertheless, the power consumptions of Intel and AMD
| CPUs can be raised to much higher levels and above 20 W
| per core, which is probably a little more than 3 times
| what an Apple M1 core consumes, they match the Apple M1
| performance and at a higher power (i.e. in the current
| desktop Zen 3 and in the soon to be introduced Intel
| Rocket Lake and Intel Tiger Lake H) they surpass the
| speed of Apple M1.
|
| So in single-thread execution, AMD Zen 3 is already
| faster and the Intel CPUs that are expected for end of
| March will also be faster, but only at much higher power
| consumptions (3 to 4 times more per core in single-
| thread).
|
| Nonetheless, in desktops and large laptops those power
| consumptions do not matter.
| GeekyBear wrote:
| The comparison to Microsoft's more expensive 2020 Surface Pro X
| is especially stark.
|
| Windows runs at less than half the speed on Microsoft's own
| flagship ARM hardware.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OhESSZIXvCA
| MikusR wrote:
| Because the CPU in Surface Pro X is half the speed of M1.
| thejellypen wrote:
| Been using MacBooks since 2014 for hobby development/work
|
| I bought a new macbook pro m1 in December. Returned 2 days later
| after realizing that it only supports one external monitor and
| even found articles stating that ultra wide monitors were not
| supported on initial release. "Just use display link adaptor?" No
| thanks I don't want a 150$ adaptor that may or may not work with
| my current setup. Even with display link I've heard of displays
| flickering on initial startup or not starting at all in
| clamshell.
|
| People saying the MacBook pro 16" might solve the issue but tbh I
| think this is apples way of pigeonholing users to either their
| desktop version or their laptop.
| grzm wrote:
| > _People saying the MacBook pro 16 " might solve the issue but
| tbh I think this is apples way of pigeonholing users to either
| their desktop version or their laptop._
|
| This is their first generation M1 and they haven't rolled it
| out across their entire line (which they have said they intend
| to do). Today marks the second month since they were released
| (10 Nov 2020). They haven't yet released something in the same
| class as the MacBook Pro 16", which it sounds like you'd
| prefer. Give it a year before assuming malicious intent.
| [deleted]
| tomatotomato37 wrote:
| Not to invalidate the author's enjoyment of his own purchase, but
| it would be nice if he clarified which computers he had owned in
| the past
| esquevin wrote:
| > The performance feels a lot better than my MacBook Pro 16",
| which is only a year old and about 3x the price.
|
| Last sentence of the first paragraph
| webmobdev wrote:
| > which is only a year old and about 3x the price.
|
| Rich people problem.
| noir_lord wrote:
| I was issued the 16" last gen Intel MacBook pro at last job
| (new job I'm back on whatever I want) and it was a seriously
| underwhelming experience for 3K's worth of hardware, screen
| was good, touchpad was sublime -everything else was crap.
|
| Battery life was mediocre (worse still if you actually use
| it), it got ridiculously hot under load, the fans where
| really loud and pitched at a frequency it was hard to ignore
| - I'd have put it down to a bad unit but everyone else with
| the same model had the same issues.
|
| It was fine but for double _good_ thinkpad money it wasn 't
| fine enough.
|
| I was glad to hand it back, new place doesn't care what I run
| so I'm back on Fedora on a fast desktop and I'm happy again,
| I still have a work issued macbook pro but it sits on a shelf
| behind me until I need to test something.
| Hamuko wrote:
| The most mind-blowing part of the 16-inch MacBook Pros are
| really the speakers, which are really nice for laptop
| speakers. However, that's also quite sad that it's the
| highlight.
| rhexs wrote:
| Is parallels running the ARM windows preview emulating 64 bit X86
| fast enough for anything practical? Can I play ten year old
| games?
| mhh__ wrote:
| > Can I play ten year old games?
|
| Based on peak performance at least I would assume yes.
|
| Honestly I'd be a little bit worried if you couldn't
| considering just how expensive they are.
| zepto wrote:
| Expensive compared to what?
| mhh__ wrote:
| Copied from a different comment of mine: PS999 is a lot of
| PC. The processor in the M1 air is about 20% faster than
| the one in my laptop (PS550 IIRC), but to spec an M1 out
| with the same amount of storage and RAM brings it to
| PS1999.
|
| I should stress that my now slightly ageing laptop is much
| thicker than an Air, but it's also used to play modern
| games so that balances out.
|
| Personally, for the price of an Air I could actually use
| I'd just get something cheap and a big PC setup.
| zepto wrote:
| What's the battery life like on your PC?
|
| It sounds like the things you care about are raw
| performance per PS, and other factors are not important.
|
| If that's what you are looking for then the Air is not
| for you, but it doesn't mean it's expensive. It just
| means you don't need the things it offers for the money.
|
| If you do care about battery life, then the M1 Air is
| cheaper than the only comparable alternative - the M1
| MacBook Pro.
|
| Nobody else even makes anything comparable.
| mhh__ wrote:
| > What's the battery life like on your PC?
|
| Actually not too bad - not _good_ , but good enough for
| it to last long enough to write up lab data for 5 hours
| or so which is all I needed it to do. It's pretty
| diabolical in Linux, but I think that's partly my fault
| because I've not bothered to fettle with the power (not
| an unreasonable requirement given that the rest of the
| distro has been fiddled with)
| bouk wrote:
| Yes it is fast enough. People are playing GTA V and many other
| games at completely acceptable performance.
|
| Here's a bunch of reports people made for games:
| https://applesilicongames.com/
| rhexs wrote:
| Pretty impressive --- Parallels supports some sort of GPU
| pass through on ARM already?
| bouk wrote:
| I have no idea what voodoo they're doing for this. It's
| incredible.
| tlarkworthy wrote:
| I have one too. Yes, all those things are nice but mine is
| fricken GOLD. Note pinky rose gold, but GOLD FRICKEN GOLD gold.
|
| Best color ever.
| DoctorNick wrote:
| Unfortunately, you don't actually "own" it.
| https://sneak.berlin/20201112/your-computer-isnt-yours/
| chubot wrote:
| Prediction: The M1 will make the web slower for most people.
|
| Web devs will buy the M1 because it executes their slow dev tools
| faster (npm ecosystem).
|
| Then they will test their web pages on the M1 and deploy them
| when they are "fast enough".
|
| Result: web pages will be even slower on mobile phones and non-M1
| laptops.
|
| _Software is a gas; it expands to fill its container_ - Nathan
| Myhrvold
| Hamuko wrote:
| But our devs already work on top-of-the-line hardware. If
| anything, this will bridge the gap for users if they can expect
| the same performance out of a $1k MacBook that you'd previously
| expect out of a $3k MacBook.
| reocha wrote:
| Web devs do test against other hardware. They have to, google
| ranks webpages (partially) based on their performance.
| chubot wrote:
| In my experience, most of them don't. I would be surprised if
| even 10% of web devs do real performance testing on other
| hardware (i.e. with actual measurements).
|
| Example: _Why is the Google Cloud UI so slow?_
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25357409
|
| It's not limited to Google either. Try ordering food on a web
| app on your phone, etc.
|
| For example I just loaded doordash.com in Chrome's mobile
| view, and it made 110 requests and consists of 7.7 MB of
| resources. It took 1.12 secs to load on a core i7 desktop
| connected to a wired network. How long do you think it will
| take on a phone with a slower CPU over a wireless network?
| For a web page that shows pictures of food.
|
| FWIW I worked at Google for over a decade, and this was a
| problem that got worse over the entire decade. People talked
| about making the network slow to fix this systemic problem,
| but it never happened (at least while I was there). You also
| have to test on different networks, although admittedly the
| M1 doesn't make your network faster so that problem won't be
| exacerbated.
|
| I still stand by the original statement; the M1 will make the
| web slower, assuming it's adopted by a bigger fraction of web
| devs than consumers (which seems very likely).
| enw wrote:
| Correction: bad devs make the web slower
| Waterluvian wrote:
| If their first M1 out the gate is this good, I'm excited to buy
| whatever comes second.
| bla3 wrote:
| I love my M1 MBP, but I use my 16" MBP more day to day. The
| larger screen seems to be more important to me than the noisiness
| and shorter battery life. Definitely looking forward to bigger
| arm macs.
| breck wrote:
| Curious, why not an external monitor? I have the M1 13 for on
| the go. An external monitor for day to day.
| threedots wrote:
| The 16" MBP is terrible with an external monitor (or at least
| mine is with my external monitor). Fans spin up like crazy
| and the case gets hot enough to fry an egg on. It's the one
| terrible weakness of an otherwise great machine.
| jsjohnst wrote:
| I wish we could narrow down why some have this experience
| and others don't. I've connected 8 external monitors (all
| at once) to three different 16" MBP and still couldn't
| produce a similar issue as some have with just one.
| breck wrote:
| Oh wild, didn't know that. This is the M1 16" MBP, or the
| older Intel one?
| justincormack wrote:
| The old one, there isn't an M1 16" yet
| breck wrote:
| Ah thanks! Didn't realize that.
| varjag wrote:
| There's no M1 16" MBP.
| eyelidlessness wrote:
| Only the low end 13" MBP has an M1 release currently.
| thatswrong0 wrote:
| Yeah this this has been abysmal for me. It does this even
| if you use it with the main display closed (clamshell mode)
|
| Makes my 2018 "Pro" machine feel like an 8 year old device
| struggling to keep up with very basic tasks because of
| thermal throttling (and this is even after getting the fans
| cleaned by Apple recently)
| eyelidlessness wrote:
| Clamshell mode is generally _worse_ for thermals. Even
| though you're not dedicating power to the internal
| screen, you're trapping more heat in the case. Other than
| that, take a look at my sibling comment for a potential
| solution.
| nklmilojevic wrote:
| How is that? Which external screen do you run?
|
| Mine is 3840x1600 (38") and MBP 15.4 (with discrete AMD
| graphics) and fans never spin up just because it is hooked
| on external screen.
| eyelidlessness wrote:
| I've had this experience and seen many others mention it
| too. I always make a point when I have time to mention how
| I've solved it.
|
| If you haven't already, try plugging the power in on the
| right side, and the display/any other peripherals on the
| left. It sounds crazy, but this has been the solution for
| tons of people. Apparently the heat generated by power
| input (even at a steady full charge) is enough to spike the
| sensors near the components on the left side.
|
| I haven't experienced any downsides to this change other
| than having to spend a few minutes rearranging stuff on my
| desk.
| joegahona wrote:
| Just confirming: By "right side," you mean _my_ right
| when looking at the computer? "Left side" is the side
| closer to the Esc key?
| eyelidlessness wrote:
| Yes, I should have clarified that.
| dtech wrote:
| That seems crazy but plausible. Explains why so many
| people complain about it while my office and home never
| had issues, it's all laid out so you plug in the power on
| the right.
| eyelidlessness wrote:
| It apparently affects _all_ of the USB-C models with
| ports on both sides, it's kind of surprising to me that
| the workaround isn't more well-known, and even more
| surprising that it's gone so many generations without a
| fix (although honestly I have no idea how involved the
| fix would be, and it's probably moot with Mx around the
| corner).
| x3sphere wrote:
| Had the same issue. I sold my 16" MBP and moved to the 13"
| M1 MBP. Performance is comparable (if not slightly better)
| and the fans almost never go on unless I'm compiling code
| and maxing out all cores.
| ngrilly wrote:
| Same. I used to have a Macbook Air 13" and a friend convinced
| me to switch a Macbook Pro 15" for the screen size. Now I
| couldn't see myself coming back to 13".
| violetgarden wrote:
| Yeah! I got a 13" mbp because I thought it would travel better,
| but after getting a 16" for work, I ended up getting the 16"
| for myself. The bigger screen is just so much more comfortable
| if I'm out and about.
| z92 wrote:
| This post says how unpredictable it is.
|
| Come on, you can run a linux distribution on a non-apple hardware
| and not even worry if any of those software will run on it. Plus
| any of the 40 other top TIOBE tools.
| bouk wrote:
| I've used a Linux laptop before and it was always so painful to
| get basic things working, like it being able to suspend when
| you close the lid. Packaging is usually better, if you don't
| want any nice GUI programs (like iaWriter) or games
| kitsunesoba wrote:
| Linux laptops are massively YMMV. Some work almost perfectly
| out of the box while others are plagued with quirks that
| never seem to get fixed.
|
| Point in case I have a circa 2008 Dell workstation laptop
| that runs Linux pretty well, except for some reason its
| volume buttons (which, as far as I can tell, send standard
| key codes) only work as expected under some distros running
| some desktop environments. It's oddly spotty for such a basic
| function, and last I checked there was no surefire fix for
| it, just an endless list of "try this".
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